My new variety of lily plant originated as a seedling which first flowered at Sandy, Oreg., in 1970 and is one of a group of seedlings planted by me with the object of producing large flowered, upright and semi-upright Oriental hybrids in shades of soft pink and white suited to forcing into flower out-of-season, heretofore unknown in the lily breeding art. The mother plant for these seedings was a hybrid produced by my crossing a clonal selection from the `Pink Glory` strain with a selected form of the species Lilium nobilissimum, which was done in a greenhouse maintained with extremely high temperatures for at least one week after pollination, this procedure being necessary in order to successfully cross these distantly related lilies for the production of the seeds planted to produce the new seedling. This particular seedling was selected by me for propagation because of the large size and upright orientation of its flowers and its broad tepalled, bowl-shaped form, unusually thick substance, and a distinctive unspotted pure white top side tepal coloration and having a soft pink reverse side, a combination unique among Oriental hybrid lilies. Also, the selected seedling possessed unusually strong, stout stems with extremely broad leaves.
This selected seedling was asexually reproduced by me and under my direction at Sandy, Oreg., by bulb scale propagation, with such satisfactory results that propagation was carried on at Sandy, Oreg., through several successive generations by bulb scale propagation as well as by natural propagation from bulblets. The successive generations of this new plant have demonstrated that the clones thereof possess to a high degree the novel characteristics of the original seedling, as well as the desirable characteristics of hybrid vigor, great hardiness, and disease resistance, and that these characteristics hold true from generation to generation under asexual propagation and appear to be firmly fixed.